• Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy

  FCP to AE back to FCP with AVCHD/ProRes Footage

  Posted by Chad O’donnell on July 13, 2009 at 4:13 am

  Hey everyone,

  I have a few questions but I also want to make sure my method/thinking is correct and I would love to hear some feedback.

  I have some AVCHD footage Log and Transfered into FCP as 1440×1080 ProRes. Now, from what I understand, that 1440 footage is actually a “rectangle” pixel, and it gets stretched out to appear 16:9. Correct?

  So, let’s say I do a export of a clip from FCP with current settings selected. I bring this clip into After Effects and AE shows that it is a 1440×1080 file.

  However, I found that AE thinks of this file as 4:3 (which I understand ratio wise it is). I know that there is a pixel aspect ratio button that you can click to view the clip as 16:9, but the problem is, if I do a straight render out of AE, it treats it as a 4:3 file. If I were to view the clip in Quicktime player, it displays it at 4:3.

  So my question is, what happened to to the “rectangle/1.33” pixels?

  Now to further confuse me, if I do import this AE clip back into FCP, the clip looks anamorphic like it should. Now, I haven’t done any heavy compositing or effects in AE yet with my clips, but do I run a risk of the effects in AE appearing to be warped or distorted when I bring the clip back into FCP?

  I guess other questions I have are, should I immediately try to convert the clips to 1920×1080 before I begin to do any work on them? If not, should I render out of AE in 1920×1080 (or will that not match correctly with a 1440 sequence in FCP)? Or, should I output from FCP in, lets say, DVCPRO 720, and then do any effects work in AE there, then bring it back into FCP as the same? Do I run the risk of losing quality?

  I have day-to-day experience with DVCPRO HD 720p/24 footage…this AVCHD stuff is throwing me for a loop (though it probably shouldn’t). I guess my last, bonus question is, why on Earth does Sony (and I think from what I read, Cannon) output their “HD” in this 1440 size instead of the 1920? Is there a physical limitation or is it something else?

  Thanks for any help you may provide.

  Chad O’donnell replied 17 years ago 1 Member · 0 Replies
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